


Parallels

by edenkings



Category: Talents Series - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Slice of Life, what should have happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:31:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9442985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenkings/pseuds/edenkings
Summary: Jeff Raven deals with getting deservedly reprimanded by Laria; Rowan thinks on the similarities between herself and Kincaid Dano.Slice of Life ficlet.





	

**_Parallels_ **

Laria’s reaction to the sting-pzzt episode sucked. Here’s a fix-it.

\--

“I’ve just had my ears pinned back by your eldest granddaughter,” Jeff Raven called out as he let himself into their quarters on Callisto. He sensed that his wife was inside, and he knew she was off-shift as Callisto was currently in occlusion, Jupiter’s looming orange mass between the Tower at Callisto and Earth preventing all but the most urgent of traffic from being routed through the station, or the most determined of husbands from returning home.

Rowan, seated primly on a stool by the breakfast bar, eyed him suspiciously over her cup of tea as he entered the kitchen. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, deftly removed the tea from her hand and took a gulp.

“I thought I heard Laria,” The Rowan replied, gracefully stepping off the stool and away from her husband of nearly fifty years with only the briefest look of irritation. She took another cup from the drawer, and poured herself a replacement. He had taken the stool as soon as she had vacated it, and so she moved through to the lounge, giving him a look of challenge as she passed.

He seated himself beside her on the couch, having taken the time to refill the pilfered cup of tea, of course. Both finished their tea with every sign of enjoyment, waiting for the other to speak. Rowan betrayed no curiosity, and Raven leaked nothing of his day – both had formidable shields and this was a familiar routine.

“And what have you done to annoy our eldest granddaughter so thoroughly that she was leaking enough for me to catch it without even trying?” Rowan finally asked, breaking the silence as if she had every intention of doing so all along. Here, she was taking a leaf out of Ringle, her one time barque-cat friend’s book, for barque-cats were the rulers of feigned disinterest. “Do I expect to hear from Damia at any moment, indignant at the latest ignominies you are intent on putting her eldest through?”

“Laria has never gone running to Damia for coddling,” Jeff said reprovingly.

Rowan sighed in agreement, for he was quite correct, Laria was not the type who liked to be coddled, “No, she always was terribly self-sufficient, and when she found herself out of her depth it was Afra that she turned to,” Rowan stared down her husband, well aware that he was diverting from the original point, “Nevertheless, Damia has her maternal instincts, and you would do well to respect a mother’s intuition.”

Unspoken went the threat of someone in the family, and perhaps any of the three generations of Gwyn-Raven women would feel it might be necessary, informing Jeff’s formidable mother. Isthia had a long ear and a nose for trouble. He might be nearing seventy-five, but his mother could still put him over her knee, and Rowan knew that as well as he did.

Aware that he was beaten, Jeff conceded, “We did not do well enough to inform our Fleet Talents of _sting-pzzt_.”

Rowan swallowed convulsively, a common reaction to the remembrance of that sensation, an as-yet-unexplained consequence of exposure to Hiver metals. Both of them had more-than-sufficient exposure to it, and both would gladly never experience that indescribably awful sensation again. Jeff could hear her thinking, she was quick, she always had been, and she came to the right conclusion.

“Dano?” Rowan asked, knowing him to be the only likely victim of the phenomenon to be sufficiently close to Laria to arouse their granddaughter’s fierce protectiveness. Laria had never been quick to anger, had never been quick to any strong emotion – she was a thoroughly dutiful girl, young woman, and she always had been.

“Dano.” Jeff sighed in confirmation, and he ran a hand through his hair, “I was aware that he had a difficult time as the sole high-T on the squadron, but from what I gathered from Laria, he was nearly burned out completely.”

Rowan made an ‘oh’, of surprise, for it took a lot to burn out a competent and capable T-2, like she knew Kincaid Dano was. Earth Prime relied on a group of people to help him assess and place Talents, it was natural that he trusted heavily in Callisto Prime’s judgement. She had read Dano’s file, had suggested sending him to her old home on Altair to train with the Bastianmajani’s. She freely admitted that Clarf Tower suited the man more, and that Laria seemed pleased with the man – certainly their eldest granddaughter had put up with enough in that uptight Negeva woman, or that incompetent Stierlman. The impressions she got from Clarf Tower when they spoke gave the impression that Clarf Tower was running better than it ever had, now if only they might find a suitable young man for Laria…  “Squadron C were identifying Hiver planets, weren’t they?”

“They were,” he confirmed, “they briefly investigated Marengo, Waterloo, and Talavera, which was beyond their original orders, but we did not expect the sheer number of colonies that have since been discovered since those orders were made. According to Laria, Dano thought he was going mad, didn’t know why he was having such a reaction.”

“No, of course not,” Rowan shook her head, “You wouldn’t know unless you’d had it explained – we only knew on Deneb because there was so much debris from the Spheres, and even then not everyone took it seriously. And what a reaction we have! I can’t imagine what that must have felt like!”

“Certainly the Fleet types Dano was with did not know about it, and did not take his few reports seriously.” Jeff said heavily, “Especially when he could not articulate what was wrong, _and_ of course he had to deal with a workload far in excess of what a lone T-2 should handle which meant his general stress levels were high.”

“That…” Rowan struggled for words. She knew intimately the situation Dano had been in, isolated and alone, with no real confidante to ease the burden. That had been her lot, as Callisto’s Lady in the Tower, before Afra had come to be her friend, before the Deneb bombardment and before Jeff Raven had come into her life and turned it upside-down.

Jeff knew where her thoughts had taken her, and he embraced her. He had not known the loneliness she had with his large family, and could not truly understand it, but he could and did hear and react to her distress.

He had not been the most respectful partner and husband in their early days, he had been demanding and had the most impossible standards. He had breezed in and out of her presence without so much as a by your leave, had upset her plans without a thought, and had generally taken her for granted. She had let him, because she could not bear to lose what little he _had_ given her; once she had known him, she could never have gone back to being the lonely Prime in Callisto Tower. He had taken that for granted too, he had not appreciated the work she was doing to maintain _his_ lifestyle – it had taken the near-death of their younger daughter and the exile of their children to Deneb for him to understand the pain he was unknowingly inflicting on her.

He had needed much counsel from many wise people – his mother, his aunts, Elizara Reidinger, and Afra – before he had recognised the baggage he too carried, the grief at the losses in his family to the Hiver bombardment, his shock and horror at the damage done to Deneb, his anger at FT&T and the High Council for their slow response. And he had been pulled away from his home to join FT&T, and in only a few short years, he had followed Reidinger IV to run it.

Her own issues, the trauma of the landslide that had orphaned her, the diffident attentions of Siglen, the accident that had orphaned her for a second time… He had become a better person and a better husband having realised that they were both damaged people. They had healed themselves, and they had healed each other. The decades since had been full of challenges, but full of joys too. They had lost their middle son, but they had gained sons-and-daughters-in-law. They had innumerable grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Their younger son had been subject to horrors at the hand of his partner, but he was recovering, and their grandchildren on Vega were promising enough, though they did not see them as often as they probably should. Jeran, Cera and Damia had been excellent Primes, and their children were shaping up to be the same.

“Will he be alright?” Rowan asked softly, once she had regained some composure.

Jeff kissed her silver hair softly, “Laria thinks so, they have been limiting his workload and ensuring he eats enough which has helped his physical recovery immensely. Emotionally, he is much relieved to know about _sting-pzzt_ , and he is beginning to recover from… I get the sense there was a bad relationship which left him much damaged.”

“He lost his partner before he was deployed to Squadron C, did he not?”

“He did,” Jeff agreed, “And perhaps it was not wise to allow the posting given that he was still grieving.”

“Grief does do strange things to people. We did not have much choice then, did we? And I recall he wanted the posting.” Rowan said softly. “Well, we may count on Laria to sort him out. She is rather managing.”

Jeff chuckled, “I wonder where she inherited that from.”

Rowan, startled from her unhappiness, twisted in his arms to glare up at him.

“I only mean, my dear,” he continued in mock-innocence, “That she has some of the best traits that this family might pass on, and the Gwyn-Raven women are capable of managing much!”

“Yes, well,” Rowan grumbled. “We don’t have so many good T-2s that you can go damaging them willy-nilly, Jeff. What are you planning to do about it?”

That was a harder question. Certainly the family, and any Talent that had spent any time on Deneb were well aware of the effects of Hiver metals. It would be near impossible to convince the conservative elements in the Council and in the Fleet that they were an irritant. Some of those individuals had even suggested that shielded quarters for those Talents assigned to Fleet positions were an extravagance demanded for no good reason. Cooler heads had prevailed – shielded quarters were a condition of contract, and the Fleet had to accept those conditions if they wanted Talent supply lines.

It was unlikely that the Fleet would make the multitude Talents that had enlisted aware of the sting-pzzt phenomenon however. Fleet training of Talent lagged well behind FT&T. They could make FT&T personnel aware, make it a part of the briefing. There was enough Hiver metal around that the Talents they sent out to the Fleet could have the personal experience, however abhorrent the thought. Then, they must rely on those Talents to inform their fleet counterparts.

Rowan caught the direction of his thoughts, and grimaced. It was not enough, merely a stopgap that would stop nothing, and they would have more damaged Talents. They would have to plan for it – the damage a dysfunctional Talent could do they both well knew.

They had got lucky with Dano, and they might not be so lucky next time.

“There are no good solutions,” he said.

She frowned, “Sometimes there aren’t. Now is that our daughter, and are you about to have your ears pinned back for a second time?”

 


End file.
